


facts of life (it's i and love and you)

by florabee



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, it's just two boys being softly in love and caring about each other, this has little to no actual plot, which i'm def blaming on the fact that this game against vegas was on valentine's day so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 06:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19435810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florabee/pseuds/florabee
Summary: some things change and some things don't. the most set-in-stone fact in andreas's life is this: he loves willy and willy loves him





	facts of life (it's i and love and you)

**Author's Note:**

> takes place during and immeditely after the tml @ vgk game on feb 14 of this past season where andreas left the game in the second because of a bad hit to his leg. i was mostly inspired by the way willy helped him off the ice:  
> https://motoleafs.tumblr.com/post/182867825721/william-helping-andreas-off-the-ice-after-his
> 
> was the title absolutely taken from an avett brothers' song? yes  
> is this the best thing i've ever written? no  
> but is this the first thing i've written in literal years? yes  
> so am i gonna be kind to myself about writing something self-indulgent and fun even if it isn't perfect? also yes, so please be kind to me too!☺️

Andreas sees McNabb coming in but he’s not expecting a hit like that, which was apparently the point, and moving out of the way doesn’t happen. Instead there’s contact and an overwhelming pain in his leg that has him hitting the ice face-first; the roar of the crowd dims down to a faint buzzing and he can only just hear Naz shouting at someone, the refs, if he had to take a guess, over the pounding in his ears.

He doesn’t know how long it takes, three seconds or three minutes, but a trainer eventually comes into his line of sight, firing off questions before he’s even knelt down on the ice. All he catches is,

“---your knee? Hey, Johnsson, you gotta answer me, bud.”

Andreas is trying, thanks.

“Not my knee,” is all he can manage to get out, but it’s true. The hit was too high up, but his leg is still throbbing and he’s really trying not to let panic at the possibility of a serious injury show on his face right here on open ice.

The trainer nods and starts to help him to his feet, nodding at someone on Andreas’s other side. He knows it’s Willy before he even turns, doesn’t occur to him that it even could be anyone else, because Willy was on the ice with him when he was hit, and of course he’d stay close by.

A thought pops up in his head when the three of them start moving across the ice. Leaning his head closer to Willy, he asks, a touch frantic,

“My stick?” Hell if he has any clue why but for some reason the whereabouts of his gear is incredibly important right now; he appreciates that Willy doesn’t even look surprised, just raises his left arm enough for Andreas to see both of their sticks in his hand.

“Thank you.” If they were in their apartment or in their home dressing room, this would be a time where he’d press a kiss to Willy’s cheek, but he tamps down the urge because obviously they’re not home. They’re in Vegas, in full view of at least a dozen cameras and a couple thousand people. It’s never an easy thing, to push down urges like that, and it’s not something they like to do, but they’re used to it. Willy’s answering smile is warm enough to soften the sting.

When they make it to the bench, Willy passes him off to another trainer, but not before leaning in close,

“I’ll see you after, okay?”

It’s not phrased like a question, just a statement of fact, and logically, Andreas knows that he’ll see Willy after, but Willy actually stating it settles something deep in his chest, and he can breathe a little easier when he starts the long hobble down the tunnel.

When the game is finally over, Andreas books it to the dressing room as quickly as he can with the massive bruise on his thigh and the ice pack wrapped around it, impatient to get back to his boys and congratulate them. He walks in with a wide smile on his face at the typical noisy chaos in front of him. He can’t see Willy yet, and he makes it two whole steps in the search to find him before he hears a loud “Mango!”, his only warning before he gets an enthusiastic armful of his best friend.

“Jesus, don’t break him, Trav,” Mo calls out. It’s enough to make everyone within earshot laugh, but then Andreas has all of his boys looking at him expectantly, and Travis’s puppy-eyed look while he still has his arms around Andreas’s waist is ridiculous. Andreas can’t help fondly rolling his eyes, but he gives them the answer they’re looking for,

“It’s just a bruise, I’m out for, like, a game tops!” The relief is tangible and the boys seem satisfied enough to go back to stripping pads off, heading to the showers, or shoving things into their bags. Travis just grins as he releases Andreas,

“That’s good, bud, really good.” The smile turns a little teasing, Travis throwing a look over his shoulder to exactly where Willy has just appeared at his stall, and Andreas kinda wants to ask if Travis has some sixth sense for his boyfriend’s whereabouts that he needs to know about. “Now go see your boyfriend, he’s been worried.” Andreas tables his sixth sense question and doesn’t have to be told twice. He moves quickly and throws himself down right in Willy’s stall and gets comfortable.

“Just one game, did I hear that right?” Willy asks, calmly reaching around Andreas to grab his clothes, very much used to his boyfriend getting all up in his way.

“Yep,” Andreas replies, popping the “p” obnoxiously just for the brief exasperated looks Willy and the nearby Naz send him, “Just a bruise but they want to give it a few days.” Willy hums in acknowledgment as he finishes getting dressed. It’s the silent work of another minute before he’s got both of their bags packed up and a hand out to help Andreas up from the stall,

“Let’s go get this plane ride over with.”

It’s late when the team finally gets to the hotel in Glendale. Andreas is exhausted, so Willy’s hotel bed looks a helluva lot more inviting than it should, leading to a careful flop onto the sheets and a deep groan that makes Willy snort from the corner table where he’s setting their bags down.

“Hey,” he says, smile in his voice, “C’mon, get changed so we can get to bed.” Andreas answers with another groan—getting up feels like it’d be too much effort—but he slips back down to the floor when Willy jabs him playfully in the side.

He and Willy have been together for long enough that going through their nighttime routines without tripping each other up is somewhere between “well-rehearsed dance” and “down to a science,” which means that by the time Andreas has finished up in the bathroom, Willy is making himself comfortable on his side of the bed.

Andreas moves to join him and only remembers to unwrap the ice pack at the last second. The bruise is a violent purple and it isn’t exactly small, but the pain’s dulled considerably by now, so Andreas isn’t too concerned. He tosses the pack and wrap onto the side tale and then slides into the space Willy left for him, making a content noise as he adjusts the pillows. It’s not until he looks over at Willy that he notices the way he’s staring at the bruise with a worried expression on his face. Andreas huffs out a small chuckle and reaches for Willy’s hand, lacing their fingers together,

“Hey,” he starts softly and waits until Willy looks at him before he continues, “I’m okay, it looks worse than it feels. And besides,” his smile goes mischievous, “you know I bruise easy anyway.”

The joke, weak as it is, has the desired effect of making Willy roll his eyes even as a blush colors his cheeks, because his boyfriend goes red at sex and sex-adjacent jokes more often that anyone else he knows. It’s a cute quirk if you ask Andreas, and it hits him, certainly not for the first time, how much he loves the man next to him.

See, even after nearly three years, Andreas easily remembers the excitement at finally getting to go and play in Toronto, and the nerves jumping around in his stomach at meeting his new team. He remembers his relief at how welcoming everyone had been, and remembers that William Nylander hadn’t been what he had expected, although to be fair, Andreas couldn’t’ve told anyone what he was expecting there.

Willy was a little quiet, especially when Kapanen wasn’t around, and he had a weird and oddly charming laugh that fit him because he was a little weird and oddly charming, and his eyes were an absurd blue that Andreas had a hard time looking away from. And he was so fucking good on the ice. Andreas had had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning too wide when Keefe decided to put him with Willy and Hyms; he knew they’d be good together like he knew the sun would set in the evening. And they were good. For the two games it lasted anyway.

The things is, Andreas doesn’t remember the Kelly hit. He knows what happened because someone told him and he saw video of it once, but the actual sequence of events in his memory? Yeah, no. He doesn’t remember hitting the ice, or how long he was down, or two trainers having to help him sit up. What he does clearly remember is Willy kneeling on the ice directly in front of him, doesn’t think he could ever forget the worry in those eyes. It’s the thing his mind keeps circling back to after he’s taken off the ice.

He remembers the initial bitterness at a concussion cutting his season off, and he remembers that bitterness fading when Willy showed up at his hotel room door a day later, looking down at his feet shyly with food in his hands as he explained that he had just wanted to check up on him. The visit hadn’t been long but Andreas had deeply appreciated not having to be alone in his room for a little while.

That was the only time Willy had visited while they were in Toronto but they spent the summer visiting each other every few weeks and texting incessantly when they weren’t together. It had taken Andreas until the very end of that summer to realize he wanted Willy and that Willy felt the same way, and, okay, maybe he had been a little slow on the uptake on that whole thing but Willy was sweet enough to only chirp him about it a little before actually asking him out on a date, and Andreas hadn’t minded the chirping because he was really into the pleased smile on Willy’s face.

“I love you,” he says, because for all the things that have changed in two and a half seasons, that hasn’t; it’s still a simple fact of his life. Willy’s pleased little smile, like he knows what Andreas was thinking about, remains the same, as does how much Andreas is still into it.

“Love you too,” Willy’s reply is earnest as always, another fact set in stone, “Now will you please come here so we can sleep?”

Andreas lets out a snort, but, yeah, cuddling up to his boyfriend and finally resting sounds like a great plan. And if he throws his weight into Willy’s side just a little to be a pest, it’s fine, Willy’s used to it.

“Brat,” the standard chirp is mostly lost in a yawn, but Willy still presses a kiss to his temple like he does every night they’re in the same bed. It’s another part of their routine and Andreas goes to sleep hoping he gets to keep this one for a long time yet.

**Author's Note:**

> was the ending cheesy as hell? yes  
> was i incredibly soft after typing that? also yes
> 
> also special thanks to kit for letting me word vomit in her dms about this mess


End file.
